Unfair encounter???

That's a good place to get creative and try to use your environment or team tactics to take on tough enemies and increase the likely hood of your escape by pairing your abilities together and using team synergy.

See, now we are just down to different interpretation of OP's inability to tell a decent record.

So, OP, was the spot check a DC 15 and most of you failed to see them letting them attack you with no dex for most of the party

Or

Did you pass the perception, hit well enough two of you killed a CR 5 Slaad and then come bitch to us because you ran into a meat grinder in murder mode?

>Passed a perception check
>Says he sees something on the water. Something really huge.
>Ahead are 2 big totems. This area must be the lair of some kind of monsters

it takes a while to learn this sort of cue, but that is the DM-speak for "back off, please approach this impending doom more intelligently or leave".

Also, he might have screwed up the CR calculation. That happens sometimes. Or you guys could have been lower on resources than he expected.

I'm running that module, and I don't think that's how that encounter is supposed to work at all.

Main thing I can see wrong is that you shouldn't have lost dex for being surprised, unless that's some Slaad ability. Granted, they would have just had advantage instead, but 5e doesn't have 'flat-footed' AC or anything like that.

The numbers might have been a bit off, but that's a bit of a tough call since you neglected to mention your party's level. If you guys were level 6 or 7, that was probably a reasonable fight that just went poorly.

lost dex for being chest-deep in a swamp, I would imagine.

Whaaaaat

Your statement makes no sense whatsoever. Running is a bad tactic if your DM is an idiot and makes everything run on "chase and kill it dies", I guess. In this case, Slaadi are intelligent creatures that probably just want the PCs to fuck off.

>things are going poorly
>don't run away
What are you, a crazed fanatic?

>playing a ranger in 5e
You were asking for it, desu.

>lost dex for being chest-deep in a swamp

That's not a thing in 5e. You don't lose dex bonus to AC; instead attackers get advantage or disadvantage to hit.

5e's encounter balancing is intentionally non-functional. They all but say so in the DMG and the MM, using "encounters aren't supposed to be balanced" as a justification for their lack of effort.

>They all but say so in the DMG and the MM, using "encounters aren't supposed to be balanced" as a justification for their lack of effort.

CR never worked. I think they're just admitting in 5e.

It works fine in 4e, but 4e is built from the ground up to be as completely balanced as possible. A whole lot of stuff got sacrificed on the altar of balance to make that happen, though.

Everything you said is correct, but other circumstantial AC changes do happen, cover being the one that comes to mind.

Well. Given you were playing Out of the Abyss, I somehow doubt that the DM made that encounter up.

So, the encounter is designed to be basically unbeatable with brute force. That's something you should hav expected in OotA. It's supposed to be challenging and more lethal than your average campaign. It even comes with a system for madness because the Underdark is so shitty.

>altar of balance

Grognard, please go.

I see that you neglected to mention the levels of your party members.

Probably relatively low considering one person got K.O'd by a 34 damage firebal, and...the sorcerer who I'm assuming is the party perception guy, since he was the only one who rolled high enough likely. I want to say they were relatively around level 4-5.

Not necessarily OHKO via fireball. Three attacks came before that.

OP here, party is level 5

No, they surprised us. They were waiting in tbe swamp waters. Only 2 managed to succeed on perception and we did focus on one slaad to kill him. We thought it was manageble somehow. Then again green slaad fireballs and 1 falls inconscious.
>"All hope is lost,we should try to run"
>"Are you suggesting leaving the rogue in the swamp?"
>Druid transforms and flies off, sorcerer casts fly to barbarian, fighter and himself, and goes flying away.
>I fall inconcious but the fighter picks me up
>There's no time to loose, we leave the rogue
I think we are going to die in the next week anyway.
I wonder what the fuck should we had done to stay safe

> inconscious
Why must you hurt me in this way?
More importantly how do you even get that wrong? It's not like the word isn't phonetically spelled or some other funky english nonsense.

On the subject of the actual fight all I can say is that's not how surprise rounds work. 2 of the PCs noticed the incoming attack so unless both said nothing then it's not a surprise round and you roll for initiative normally.

Other than that you aren't giving enough info. What level are you? Did you have any tactics beyond swarming them one at a time?

As for your next fight, well, don't clump for fireballs and try to tie up the green slaad in melee. Also prep as much as possible beforehand. Bring potions and what not.

I'm sorry for my english, I'm not native english speaker. We were all level 5 PCs. We were low on supplies and running away from drow so we thought it was good to cut across the swamp for going faster to a city.
I for example had only 14 bolts left and I rely a lot on my handcrossbow

We didn't have tactics and planned on the way because we were running away from a huge swamp monster

Hmmm, yeah I can see why that'd be more of a problem. Unfortunately I'm not that familiar with 5th so I guess just try to leverage an advantage you can next time with whatever prep you can do. /shrugs
Oh and it's unconscious. :)
You where only one letter off which is what got me.

If you really are interested in how one makes such mistakes,in italian( and french too i think) you would add "in". (Not him btw)

>where
Why must you hurt me in this way?

>sorcerer casts fly to barbarian, fighter and himself, and goes flying away
I guess you don't know how 5e works, huh ?

What do you mean? He had sorcery points left amigo

I don't have the handbook on me at the moment and I'm not the guy, but I'm pretty sure fly is a concentration spell so he couldn't cast it on 3 people

Actually I went to check and if you used a 5th level spell slot, he could do that, but considering the 3 CR 5 slaads and green salad whipped your asses, that's probably not the case
Twinned spell would only get too people
So yeah, your sorcerer doesn't know the rules
Also your druid can't fly till 8th level and considering the slaads you're probably not there either
The only reason your group survived was because their dummies

Wild form owl can fly

Actually I think he cheated and the DM didn't notice or he noticed and didn't say a thing

Read fucking druid rules Goddamnit, it says no forms that can fly when you're under level 8. Tell your druid he's a cheater or an idiot

A lot of DMs don't know 5e rules for shit, it's such an easy system to pick up you don't have to know much, which leads to some DMs who just nod when their paladin says "I smite the demon for 10d8 damage" instead of going "well actually no it's xd8"
So I'm more inclined to think the player cheated or doesn't understand the rules

The OP can get back at his fellow players by bringing up how they all cheated and otherwise they would've died

You're right. Actually in my defense I'll say I didn't know because I never rolled a druid in 5e